Plain as Cotton Candy
by PowPowa
Summary: Nothing interesting had happened to her since first grade. Luka Megurine is completely normal- except for hair the color of cotton candy. So why did she feel as though she wasn't? And who's this psychopath she keeps seeing everywhere? -Rating may go up.
1. Kinda Sad Backstory is Kinda Sad

Bah, my first attempt at being serious, and HOLY TUNA I've been watching too much Ryohgo Narita-based animuz lately. Anyway, Vocaloid (c) YAMAHA and Luka & Miku are (c) Crypton. Have fun reading, don't forget to review. The next chapter will be longer, I swear.

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><p>There was once a girl with hair the color of cotton candy.<p>

She was not usual or unusual, and a good word to describe her was "statistic number". Her name was Luka Megurine, and despite the meaning of the name, no one paid her attention. Despite her hair, the color of cotton candy, Luka Megurine was a statistic number.

" Do you want to play blocks?" the goofily grinning little girl in a pinafore asked, her shoulder-length aqua hair tied in high, comical-looking pigtails. She had a small jumble of alphabet blocks cradled in her arms.  
>" Sure," Luka replied, setting down the picture book she had desperately been trying to read. Even though she was in kindergarten, Luka wanted to be able to read, so she could understand all the magazines at the grocery store checkout. They looked terribly interesting, and she wanted to know if they really were.<br>Miku Hatsune, otherwise known as an aqua-haired girl with a constant grin, plopped down next to Luka and shoved the blocks in front of her and Luka. She scrutinized several of them, as though searching for microscopic flaws, then pushed them over to Luka.  
>" You can have those! I don't like the ones with numbers," she stated matter-of-factly. "Now, let's build a house with them! Then we can get some lego-people from the boys or something!" Luka smiled.<br>" Alright!"

_I actually wanted to do the lion puzzle with Haku._

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><p>" Woooow, Luka! You read saooo much! I can't even finish a picture book!" Miku exclaimed, hovering next to Luka's seat. Luka looked over to her, and smiled.<br>" Maybe you should try!" she teased cheerfully. Miku crooked her eyebrow.  
>" Whyyyy? The teacher just makes us read boring stuff anyway!" Luka chuckled, and Miku giggled. At that point, the laughter could not stop- they began laughing like maniacs, struggling to form half-coherent jokes about the math textbooks they so hated already.<br>" Ne- Neru, please give that back!" they heard a soft, plaintive voice call out from across the room. Haku, a girl unusually tall for her age, was pleading desperately with the (much shorter) Neru Akita to please, _please_ would you kindly give that hair ribbon back? Miku pressed her lips into a thin line, and speedwalked over to the situation.  
>" Neru! Give that back to Haku, right now! She's gonna cry if you don't!" she snapped, hands on her hips, probably imagining herself as some sort of wild classroom vigilante. It was true; tears were collecting on the edges of Haku's red, red eyes. Neru stuck her tongue out.<br>" Haku's a big crybaby anyway! I bet she's lying about how old she is and she really got held back from second grade in her old school because she was a stupid!" Neru shouted, and Luka felt something twist inside of her when the other kids began laughing. Miku's normally happy face transformed into a scowl- _and she decked Neru right in the face_. The other classmates just laughed even harder. Neru's face registered shock, and after a moment she started sobbing.  
>" I was gonna give it back!" she wailed, rubbing her eyes. And that laughter? It got louder, and louder, it felt like it was gnawing at her chest and trying to drag her under the table... Luka stood up and yelled a grown up word she'd heard before:<br>"SHUT THE HELL UP!"  
>The teacher, who had just gotten back from the semi-important matter of turning in report card grades, had walked in at that precise moment.<br>And out of the corner of her eye, Luka saw Miku suppress a laugh.

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><p>" Nothing interesting has happened to Luka Megurine since 1st grade."<br>At Christmas that year, Luka's grandmother had bought her a journal, and that was the only entry inside of it, written neatly on the front page. Now fifteen, Luka was not noticeable in any way- plain grades, clothes. Even her hair seemed plain, and in truth she hated it. The one part of her anyone would ever notice simply faded into everything else, and she looked completely unremarkable.  
>In fifth grade, Luka had gotten glasses. Of course, she couldn't pick them out- no, no, her mother <em>had<em> to, because it was obvious a fifth grader would make a horrible mistake if she picked out her _own glasses_! And so she had a pair of thick, wire-framed monstrosities Miku kindly referred to as "kinda old lookin'."  
>Miku.<br>Over the years, Luka had gotten the distinct feeling that Miku didn't even notice her any more. After all, Miku was... popular. She referred to everyone the same way, talked to them the same way, even if they were new (maybe it was that feeling of warmth she always talked with that made her so popular in the first place?). So Luka was just an "everyone else" to her, as well. She didn't really care.  
>" And then, get this, Haku gets out a bottle of-"<br>" Miku."  
>Luka looked down at her English homework, trying very hard to ignore what she had just done- interrupt one of Miku's party stories. But Haku was her friend, and she didn't want people to make fun of her. Not everyone was as warm as Miku thought they were.<br>Miku switched to a different story, and Luka continued her homework.

" What was that about?" a random member of Miku's posse asked. Most of them knew nothing of Luka- she didn't ever do anything. Miku shrugged.

" I think I knew her from somewhere."

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><p>In another place, suffice to say a boy with strange hair was checking his text messages. Upon seeing a certain one, his face split into a grin.<p>

" It's starting soon, then..."


	2. Look! A RECEPTIONIST!

I don't own anything, not even the pretending-to-be-a-receptionist trick (that honor goes to Count Olaf of A Series of Unfortunate Events). Luka & Miku are both Crypton, and Haku is by Caffein. So reviews would be awesome. And also, as for the "romance" part... That's a secret, you hear? it'll all be revealed in due time. Though I guess it's kind of obvious now.

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><p>She was sitting at her desk, taking down notes on the impossibly boring subject of math, when an announcement over the intercom rang out:<br>" Luka Megurine, to the office."  
>The teacher, who was old, yelled out towards the ceiling: " WE DON'T HAVE A LUKA IN HERE!" and looked around the room, just to check.<br>Luka stood up swiftly, with her eyes cast down.  
>" I'm right here, miss."<br>The teacher scratched her head in a confused, why-haven't-I-seen-her-before way, and nodded, sinking in a painful-looking way back down into her chair.  
>" Well, you'd better go on then..."<br>Luka fastwalked out of the room as fast as she could, with eyes burning into her back. She could hear them talking about her- " Who's that girl?" "How long has she been in our class?" " What's with those glasses?"

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><p>She opened the door and slid into the office quietly. The receptionist looked up at her and smiled (in a way Luka found very creepy). It was quieter than the bottom of the ocean, and she was uneasy. For a moment, she didn't speak, and she nudged her toes in the door frame, ready to run at a moment's notice. She didn't know why; she was just so very uneasy.<br>" I didn't know the school's receptionist was a guy..." Luka noted hesitantly, feeling surprised.  
>" I'm not a receptionist," the non-receptionist shot back. Luka was taken aback momentarily. Well, at least she knew he was a crazy person, then. That smile had been freaking her out.<br>" Then why are you in the receptionist's chair?"  
>She hadn't budged an inch from the door since she'd entered the room.<br>" Because the receptionist happened to be out, Luka. Why else? I mean, it's not like she's tied up underneath the desk or something. I'm not insane, like you seem to already think," he replied (rather cattily).  
>Luka's face turned white, and she bolted out of the room.<p>

" That went better than I expected!" he commented, ruffling his hair- and what a strange color of hair it was...

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><p>She stiffly walked over to her seat in class and sat stiffly down, stiffly reaching for her shoulder bag.<br>There was a psychopath in the receptionist's chair.  
>There was a crazy person in the office.<br>As she mechanically -stiffly!- wrote down notes, staring down at her paper, her pencil lead snapped. Of course. She'd been applying so much pressure. Of course it would break. Everything that was pressured broke. But she couldn't stop thinking about that crazy guy in the office, in the receptionist's chair, smiling insanely like he belonged there _and oh God he had known her name somehow._ She looked at the broken tip of her pencil, the color draining out of her face (just when it had somehow returned to normal). If he knew her name because he'd gotten it from the school's files, he knew where she lived too. And lots of other things she was fairly certain weren't meant for a lunatic to know. Should she tell? Should she say, 'there was a lunatic in the receptionist's chair when I was called to the office' to some teacher? They wouldn't believe her! She was, after all, effectively invisible.

The bell rang.

Sitting at the lunch table, across from Miku (her usual spot) she felt nothing but a very unreasonable level of paranoia. What if that crazy guy was still here, at the school? What if he was _stalking_ her?  
>" Oh, Luka! I heard you got called to the office today!" Miku chirped, leaning across the table. Luka jumped, nearly falling off of the bench. Miku hadn't addressed her directly in months.<br>Miku's friends were as shocked as she was -"whooa, when'd she get there?"- and Luka hastily pushed her glasses back up her nose.  
>" It was for a tardy I had the other day, because of gym?" she saidasked, still slightly nervous. Miku grinned.  
>" I wish they wouldn't getcha for that, y'know? It's just like the dress code thing, it's silly!" And indeed, it seemed Miku had not not only violated dress code, but blasted a hole in it with a sawed-off shotgun. She was wearing white short shorts, a white short tube top, lots of glitter and insanely long hair ribbons (not to mention the expensive-looking headphones around her neck). It made Luka feel homely in comparison.<br>" Well, maybe they have dress code just for you," Luka replied in a haltingly teasing voice, smiling a bit. Miku (per usual) reacted overdramatically, reaching up towards the roof and yelling something about being forsaken. Then she smacked her right hand down on the table and leaned forward; Luka, feeling inclined to do so, leaned back.  
>" Ohhh! So, Kaito's having a party thing, and I feel bad because I haven't talked to you in foreeeevvveeeer, so why don't you come with me? I'll go find you something other than those weird stuffy grandma clothes your mum buys and I can steal Mikuo's contacts or something, and you can go out and socialize, because really people don't talk to you much besides Haku, huh? And she's always like really drunk, even at school, which is really stupid-" at this point, Luka began to tune her out. She was beginning to rant about things completely unrelated to her original topic.<br>" -and anyway did you know about that weird cat meme thing? It's like a poptart rainbow or something and Momo's singing in it! MOMO! Oh, right, you're coming, right?" Luka snapped out of her thoughts and began to reply quietly:  
>" Oh, wel-"<br>" That's great, thanks soooo much, Luka! This is going to be fun! Come over tomorrow!" Luka blinked, dumbfounded. What had just happened? had Miku just invited her to a party...? Nobody ever really paid her much attention, much less invited her to parties.  
>And really, what compelled her to wear that crazy outfit to school?<p> 


End file.
